drawing-room fire on Sunday, for fear
people should not sit in their rooms and meditate," continued Mrs.
Duncombe. "Bob manages to be fond of her through all; but she
regularly hates me."

"Not very wonderful," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing. "I suppose there
is a charming reciprocity of feeling."

"I think I can afford to pity her," said Mrs. Duncombe, lightly.
"Just fancy what I must have been to her! You know I was brought up
in a convent at Paris. The very bosom of the scarlet woman."

"But," interrupted Cecil, "you were never a Roman Catholic, Bessie!"

"Oh dear, no; the Protestant boarders were let entirely alone.
There were only two of us, and we lay in bed while the others went
to mass, and played while they went to confession, that was all. I
was an orphan; never remember my mother, and my father died abroad.
Luckily for me, Bob was done for by my first ball. Very odd he
should have liked a little red-haired thing like me; but every one
is ticketed, I believe. My uncle was glad enough to get rid of me,
and poor old Mrs. Duncombe was unsuspecting till we went home--and
then!"

"And then?"

"Cecil may have some faint idea."

"Of what you underwent?"

"She wanted to begin on me as if I were a wild savage heathen, you
know! I believe she nearly had a fit when I declined a prayer-
meeting, and as to my walking out with Bob on Sunday evening!"

"Did she make you learn Watts's hymns?"

"No! but she did what was much worse to poor Bob. She told him she
had spent the time in prayer and humiliation, and the poor fellow
very nearly cried."

"Ah, those mothers have such an advantage over their sons," said
Lady Tyrrell.

"I determined I would never go near her again after that," said Mrs.
Duncombe. "Bob goes; he is really fond of her; but I knew we should
keep the peace better apart. I let her have the children now and
then, when it is convenient, and oddly enough they like it; but I
shall soon have to stop that, for I won't have them think me a
reprobate; and she has thought me ten times worse ever since I found
out that I had brains and could use them."

"Quite true," said Camilla; "there's no peacemaker like absence."

"The only pity is that Swanslea is no further off," returned Bessie.

And so it was that Cecil, backed by her two counsellors, held her
purpose, and Raymond sadly spoke of the plan of separation to
Julius. Both thought Mrs. Poynsett's own plan the best, though they
could not b